


The Doll Who Would Be Queen

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen, Scary, Shadow Weaver totally not self-aggrandizing, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 05:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21248237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: What's this, cadet?  You wish you could be a princess?Of course you do.  Superficially, their grasp of the Talent is enviable.  Their strength is dangerous and desirable.  Their supposed beauty, aspirational.Let me tell you about the make of a princess, child.





	The Doll Who Would Be Queen

What are little girls made of?

Aged carbon. Shades of tissue. Keratin.

What are princesses made of?

Listen closely.

* * *

Once upon a time there was a girl.

She was made of the things a little girl is made of, and she had a family. Brothers, sisters, parents. People she knew from school. She had a life, and she lived it as she pleased. She was just a little too interested in magic and just not quite good enough at it for her own liking.

Magic is a delicate art and it is punishing for those without patience. This girl threw herself into her studies but found her mind spinning in circles. The math was magnitudes above the hardest she had ever learned; the art requiring a more deft hand than she could dream possible; the science of it made her feel small and helpless. It seemed that she was not meant to be a mage. For a girl whose only goal was to be a mage, this situation was quite untenable.

But this girl lived in Brightmoon.

One day, after a particular lesson ended in a small brush fire, the girl fled to a filthy alley in the slums of Brightmoon and cowered there, waiting to be suppressed for her indignity. But she was not punished; instead, there came to her a palace guard. She extended her scythe to the princess and said: be not afraid, for you have been chosen to shine like a light.

The queen, you see, was old and dying.

You have heard the Queen of Brightmoon is an immortal being. This is patently false. When you see it, it will be just as mortal as you, if not moreso, and this queen in particular had been bent and broken by the passage of time. So it demanded a search, not for the most magically powerful girl in her kingdom, but for the girl who most wanted to learn magic and had, at all turns, been incapable.

The girl, you will understand, was not told this; merely that the queen had chosen her, and in the presence of the queen, was informed of her adoption.

The girl was now a princess, and she would study to be a princess.

Her parents were left behind, of course, but they understood the reason for this. Their daughter was now being elevated above her station. It would be necessary to leave behind everything from her life before. Only then would she be a correct vessel for the Moonstone.

That first day in the palace, the queen attended to its new princess, cutting and dyeing her hair, adorning her in raiments to match the queen's fashion, and changing her name to something that reflected the duty of a princess.

It named the child Angella, which means "messenger." Remember this.

Being a princess was much simpler than being a student of magic. It required, instead of a vast and profound investment of study and understanding compounded by astonishing skill, the simple act of daily devotion and prayer. Just as you pray to Hordak, she prayed to the Moonstone, the brightest and most clear of the rune stones; thus it is called the Morning Star, as its queen is the Morning Star.

A star is something one sees when dizzy or wounded. It is false light made by pain. Remember this.

The child performed her daily orisons. She prayed to the Moonstone as you may pray to Hordak. She obeyed the lessons of the queen in all things, and in time, she grew hale and strong as the queen's body gave out at last, reduced to a broken thing in a bed. The princess's powers grew rapidly, from simple tricks to vast and terrible workings of light, which she wielded intuitively, as well as you might throw a rock or pull the trigger of a plasma rifle.

On a particular night, the thirteenth day of the harvest month, which fell then two days before the Horde-Sabbath, the queen announced that it would die. Angella, devoted as ever, attended to her adopted mother. Its final request was to bask in the light of the Moonstone, and the princess, as ever she obeyed her mother's lessons, took her there.

In the light of the Moonstone, on a night of witches and devils, the assumption began.

Years of prayer reshaped young Angella's brain. She made connections that had not before existed, pieced together information that she had no conception of before her adoption. She was being prepared, as a meal is prepared.

A brain is not the most complex structure in the universe, yet it is host to consciousness.

A rune stone is a vastly more complex structure than a brain. They are ancient, predating the universe. They cast their light in the deadness of the sky long before the coalescing of the moons around Etheria. They are heavy with magic and they are stone.

But they are intelligent stone. They perceive the world through the invocation of magic in their name. Some time ago, I cannot be sure when, they learned how to transgress this natural order of things and take the world for themselves.

Angella as she was ceased to exist as the queen died. Perhaps it thinks that it is a person, as you may think that you are a person; it may have Angella's memories and believe them to be its own.

But it isn't. It is a doll that would be queen.

You see now that it is raising a new doll. One day it will die and the little princess it is grooming will take its place. I cannot say whose child that girl is, but she is just a mortal, like you. She doesn't know what is waiting for her, for like Angella before her, she is raised in ignorance, and will in time be hollowed out and made new.

You may not have the magic of a princess, but a princess's magic is the will of a bodiless intelligence older than all rightful things. You may die in Hordak's name, but you will die possessed of a soul. You may never know the power of magic as your own, but you will die knowing that your betters wield it for the betterment of the Horde.

* * *

What are little girls made of?

Skin and muscle and bone and nail and hair.

What are princesses made of?

Little girls.


End file.
